West meets east: a new hybrid combines the best features of shakuhachi and Western concert flutes - Brief Article

Whole Earth, Summer, 2002 by Robbie Hanna Anderman

From the perspective of a musician who was introduced to flute playing via the end-blown bamboo shakuhachi, the common Western transverse metal concert flute has a couple of advantages:

1. the relative ease of playing any note in the chromatic scale (traditional bamboo/cane flutes are stuck in one key, like a harmonica--though shakuhachi masters seem to have no limitations with that);

2. the facility of playing loud enough to be in an orchestra (some natural flutes do come close).

It also has several relative disadvantages:

1. it sounds metallic;

2. one needs to twist one's body, arms, and/or head into an off-balance position. The hand position has contributed to many cases of carpal tunnel syndrome;

3. on an open-holed flute, one can "half hole" or (depending on the quality of the flute) quarter hole or more or less by choice. Metal on/off keys do not give that potential.

4. I have played a metal concert flute, and find I cannot get anything close to the "bending" of notes that is possible on the shakuhachi by tilting the player's head or the flute.

Finding that I like being physically "centered," rather than twisted, while playing, and desiring to carry only one flute to play along with other musicians, I decided that a marriage of the two styles of flutes was in order.

I traded in my father's retired trumpet for a concert transverse flute and asked Terry Wedge, an Ontario bamboo flute maker, to replace the usual metal "head piece" with an end-blown mouthpiece. The result showed me it was possible.

Then I sent it all to Monty Levenson, master shakuhachi craftsman in northern California (www.shakuhachi.com). The refined hybrid that emerged, pictured here, has a more natural sound (to my ears), a louder sound, and the ability to play all "Western" scales while remaining centered. And it has the potential to bend notes by tilting one's head or the flute, as only a shakuhachi player can.

The photo speaks for itself as to the mechanics of the marriage, but I want to note the importance of a comfortable and individually appropriate placement of the thumb rest (similar to a clarinet).

I offer the idea to anyone who'd like to center while playing with the winds. It opens up a whole new range of comfort and sound for flute players.

Robbie Hanna Anderman, here with his hybrid flute, has been a musician for forty-five years, thirty-one of them on the shakuhachi. He is the only shakuhachi player in the Killaloe, Ontario area. While the shakuhachi is still his favorite flute, he sometimes yearns to play with other musicians on an equal tuning. Robbie plays shakuhachi on "Before the Moon Rose" (cassette $10.50, CD $17.50 postpaid from Monty H. Levenson, PO Box 29/4, Willits, CA 95490. 707/459-3402, www.shakuhachi.com).